Day 41 and 42 - The Guardroom

Yesterday was an unusual day. We took one of our cats to the dentist and the poor thing had four teeth pulled. She's got a dental illness, so once a year we take her to the dentist and each time she is returned to us with less teeth. All of her molars and premolars are gone now and she only has her incisors and three canines left. It's always painful to watch her go through it, but in the end it's for her best. It has to be done or she will be in more and more pain as time goes. It's just hard to see her all groggy and weak as she suffers the aftereffects of the sedation and the general damage a tooth removal does to a kitty. So, yesterday was spent taking care of her and making sure she was okay.

Today's pictures are from a guard room in Castel Sant'Angelo. From the looks of things I'd say it used to be a nice enough place, with its own fireplace and a window. I can almost picture the officer sitting in the chair talking to his men on the bench.

It's funny how some places have that impact on you and some don't. Somehow I find it easier to picture the past in places like this, where the common folk hung around, than in fancy rooms with tapestries. Maybe because their lives were closer to mine than the nobility's were - I've had many jobs in my day - from assembling chain saws and sowing machines or packaging raw meat to teaching, and now, working in the field of law, and though I now have a cushy white collar job, I know full well what it's like to be a laborer. Jobs like that build character I think, and though they may be monotonous or gritty, they certainly have their charm, especially if you have a great team around you. Some things are universal and transcend space and time. Gritty jobs is one of them and fun coworkers is another. It makes it easy to picture the guards sitting on that bench, chatting merrily before the morning briefing...

/MrsHjort